James Delingpole's Blog, page 23

Why I'm getting my PhD from the 'University' of Manitoba

Hey, everybody, I'll have none of that disrespectful "Mr Delingpole" from you lot any more. From now on it's Dr Delingpole, got that? Though I admit I haven't actually picked up my PhD yet, I can speak with considerable confidence that it's in the bag. That's because I'm planning to get my doctorate from the "University" of Manitoba, Canada. And just check out this story about what an enlightened attitude this august seat of learning has to people with "disabilities."

The University of Manitoba said it is reviewing its policy on how to accommodate students with disabilities despite winning a victory in court this week over a controversial decision to grant a PhD to a student…

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After Libya: where should Cameron strike next?

Some readers may have woken up today wondering whether they have been transported into a parallel universe. In this parallel universe – let us call it Moronica – it is considered wise and statesmanlike when your country is falling to bits and £4.8 trillion in debt to borrow money you can't possibly afford in order to finance your crumbling military to fire missiles at a million pounds a pop at a ramshackle army in a far off country in order to replace the insane despot who was formerly in charge with a newer, likely more dangerous regime.

Assuming, for a moment, that this really is Moronica that we now all inhabit, let us consider the options as to where Our Glorious Leader Dave should strike next in order further to demonstrate his international statesmanship:

China

Pros:…

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Sun Causes Climate Change Shock

If Michael Crichton had lived to write a follow-up to State of Fear, the plotline might well have gone like this: at a top secret, state of the art laboratory in Switzerland, scientists finally discover the true cause of "global warming". It's the sun, stupid. More specifically – as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark has long postulated – it's the result of cosmic rays which act as a seed for cloud formation. The scientists working on the project are naturally euphoric: this is a major breakthrough which will not only overturn decades of misguided conjecture on so-called Man Made Global Warming but will spare the global economy trillions of dollars which might otherwise have been squandered on utterly pointless efforts to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, these scientists have failed to realise just how many…

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An open letter from my old mate David Cameron to the people of Britain

In the latest Spectator I have written an open letter to my old university mate David Cameron. Here is a companion piece: the letter I'd like to see him write to the nation, having at last recognised the gravity of the crisis we're in.

He won't write it, of course.

Dear Britain,

If you realised just how totally stuffed we are you wouldn't waste time getting to the end of this letter. You'd already be outside Number 10 with pitchforks demanding my head on a spike – and you'd be quite right to do so, for I have failed you. My cabinet has failed you. My Coalition government has failed you. And it's no good our trying to blame the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown administrations for having failed you even…

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Dave, you're a disappointment – but there's still time to change that

Dear Dave,

There are few things more annoying than when an old friend writes to tell you what a hash you're making of your life. Especially when the friend is a squitty hack/blogger and you're a leader of the free world. God, how impertinent is that?

But there are things that old friends can see that newer friends wouldn't dare tell you even if they were capable of noticing. Yeah, you're Prime Minister and I'm not, but I'm really not jealous. I don't judge friends' success by the titles or positions they've accumulated, or by how rolling in money they are or how powerful they've become. What I ask myself is: 'Given the advantages they've had and the opportunities they've been given, have they achieved their full potential?' And in your case the answer is no. Or at best, a very feeble 'Not yet'.

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Murdoch, Hackgate, Climategate, the Guardian and the vile hypocrisy of the Left

The liberal-Left has many vices. But surely the most noisome one of all (in a crowded field) is its rank hypocrisy. If you're going to take the moral high ground – as Lefties will insist on doing at every opportunity – the very least you owe the world in return if you have a shred of compunction, decency or intellectual consistency is to demonstrate more integrity than those you are impugning. And if you can't do that, then bloody well shut up.

In the last few months, you can't have helped noticing, the liberal-Left media, led by the BBC and the Guardian, have been dwelling on the News International phone hacking scandal with a shrillness and hysteria and foaming moral outrage out of all proportion to the nature of the offence.

Am I defending phone hacking or the leaking by police of confidential information to newsapers? Of course I'm not. I think…

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President Perry or President Bachmann? It's the only question remaining

On US talk radio the other evening, I happened to mention to my hosts how much better things were looking in America, now that they had Rick Perry as a voting option. President Obama is toast – I think on that we can all agree. But up until quite recently, we weren't exactly spoilt for choice as to who might replace him. Now that Bachmann has shown she has legs and Perry has finally ended his shilly-shallying as to whether or not to run, Americans can look to the future with at least a glimmer of hope.

But how much hope, that's the question. I can't say that either is my dream candidate. My dream candidate would either have been Paul Ryan or Allen West. Yeah yeah, too young and inexperienced to run, yadda yadda, better chance next time, I've heard all that before. The point though, surely, is that there…

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The curious rise of bottled water

It is virtually free out of a tap and yet millions of us pay a fortune for it every day. The bottled water industry is a phenomenon with public bodies and private citizens alike content to part with good money to buy it and vast quantities of it being shipped all around the world…

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We're destroying our countryside – and for what?

By the time you read this I'll be in the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world: a section of the Wye valley in beautiful mid-Wales, where I'll spend every day paddling in streams and plunging in mill ponds and playing cockie-ollie in the bracken and wandering across the sunlit uplands, drinking in perhaps the finest view God ever created — the one across the Golden Valley towards the Black Mountains, and beyond that to the Brecon Beacons.

And each time I do so I wonder sadly whether this will be the last time I get to witness such perfection. No, I'm not dying, I don't think. But the country I love is.

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London riots: Cameron has learned nothing, will do nothing

Can it really have been that this time last week that our streets were being torn apart by some of the worst civil unrest in recent British memory? Obviously not. In my head I had these terrible visions of men trying to defend their property being mown down and killed by drivers, of innocents being burned out of their homes, of passers-by being beaten up by gangs, of diners in restaurants being robbed en masse, of millions upon millions of pounds worth of property being destroyed even in the midst of Britain's gravest financial crisis since the 30s, of kids as young as 11 exulting in the impunity of the watching police and looting to their heart's content, of rioters being dignified as "protestors" by our state broadcaster and then given every…

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